Internal Excerpts
by RoseFrederick
Summary: A collection of separate musings on possible internal thoughts of the Doctor's during a few specific events of the new series. The scenes in question are from Parting of the Ways, Doomsday, and The Doctor's Daughter.
1. Running From Facts

**Internal Excerpts**

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Series Overview: The chapters of this story are being posted together as a collection of separate pieces of a type. I'm marking this as completed because each short is complete and I don't currently plan to add any additional scenes – but I never expected to write any of these in the first place, so that may change. A final confession: though I do edit, I don't use a beta or have a Brit-picker. If there are any glaring errors, I'd appreciate someone letting me know. As usual, I don't own anything you recognize.

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**Running From Facts**

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The Doctor runs away; maybe it's not a good thing, but it's what he does. He always has his reasons, though. A bit of internal dialogue centered on the end of _Parting of the Ways._

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His mind was a jumble of conflicting emotions as he stared up at a glowing Rose. Relief was definitely in there, as he hadn't wanted the Daleks free to destroy Earth and the rest of the universe. Even if he couldn't bring himself to push the lever and destroy another civilization to prevent it. Awe played a large part, as the power Rose was currently carrying was nearly unimaginable. The determination she must have had to open up the TARDIS and return was almost as unfathomable. These clever little humans always did manage to surprise him.

Horror came into it when he felt Jack dragged back into existence. The Doctor had clearly heard the other man die over the radio. To make the decisions he did in situations like this, sometimes he had to be utterly ruthless to friend and foe alike. That didn't mean he regretted it any less. He'd known going in that all those staying behind to help defend the station would die buying him time. He'd known Jack would die. He'd hated it, and hated himself for being okay with it, but he had pushed those feelings aside. That was its own kind of horrible, but oh, this was so much worse.

Even as he pulled the vortex energies out of Rose, he was fundamentally unsettled and preoccupied. As a Time Lord, he possessed so many extra senses beyond the limited set these wonderful apes had, and nearly every one of them was twisting and screaming awareness of the Fact downstairs. Everything he felt and everything he'd ever learned about Time knew it was _wrong_ for such a thing to exist.

When the energies were safely restored back into the TARDIS, and the damage they'd wrought in him triggered the first traces of the different burn of an impending regeneration, the sensations only got worse. Even the events the Time Lords had always referred to as fixed points weren't so immutably solid in the Web of Time that they bent the fabric of reality like this. Feeling it, he wanted nothing more than to run away. Even knowing that the underlying entity was Jack, a better man than he'd ever expected their stray conman to turn out to be. Under normal circumstances, maybe he'd have tried to fight the impulse. Maybe he still wouldn't have, because sometimes he was a coward and this was another unbearable horror that was fundamentally his fault. It was hard to say.

It also didn't matter, because the fact was that this was not a matter of normal circumstances, not even in comparison to the regular extremes his life was prone to. Even his easiest regenerations had always been a bit rubbish the first day or so. The way he died didn't seem to effect the difficulty of a particular regeneration cycle, but he'd been through the process more than a handful of times now, and he could recognize this was going to be a bad one. With an awareness of Jack the Fact already beating itself against his brain, how much would such a presence strain the stabilization of his next form?

In one of his worst previous regenerations, he'd nearly died when unable to recuperate in a TARDIS Zero Room to cut off the interference of the normal background noise of the universe. If he let Jack back in the TARDIS now, would the regeneration fail and strand both his companions in the Vortex? Jack knew some of the controls, yes, but the Doctor really had no idea what aftereffects might result from what Rose had done to the TARDIS. Worse, the old girl was just as much of a time-sensitive being as he was. Even if she hadn't suffered any ill effects from that, there was no telling what exposure to such a fracturing of the space-time continuum as Jack had become might cause. It could outright harm her for all he knew, or she might simply react badly and send them careening through time and space to who knew where. From past experience he could only assume that if that happened, it wasn't likely to be anywhere remotely safe.

His own inherent relation to time energies and store of regenerative energy had allowed him to keep Rose from sustaining permanent harm from what she'd done. Which was ridiculously lucky for her. The way he felt, even if the regeneration went okay, he couldn't assume he'd be able to protect her from anything that might happen next. He couldn't take extra risks that might endanger Rose without something bigger on the line. Especially when she'd just saved the universe, even if he couldn't entirely approve of what she'd done.

It wasn't right to leave Jack behind like this. It wasn't fair, and he couldn't even imagine how it would affect a man he'd gladly called friend to not only be left behind, but to have been turned into something so unnatural without any explanation of what had happened. So be it. He was ruthless and he was a coward, and the amount of time he had left to see himself, the TARDIS, and Rose to safety was swiftly disappearing. At least Jack was smart and capable enough to take care of himself.

The Doctor ran.

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A/N: "Inspired" by a fic with character portrayals that could be summarized as 'the Doctor is a stupid mean poopyhead and Ianto is better than everyone ever' among other fundamental flaws. Thanks for the impetus to write, Author!


	2. All the Lives I've Lead

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**All the Lives I've Lead**

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He didn't like losing people and he never would. Yet what else could he have possibly expected when he started befriending humans? Oneshot character thought exploration taking place at the end of _Doomsday_.

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The silly, sentimental part of him swore he could actually feel Rose Tyler on the other side of the Void, touching the same featureless white wall in another universe. He allowed himself to indulge the feeling for a moment. However, it was only for a moment. Rose was special, but all his companions were special. He had known from the very start when he'd kidnapped a couple of nosy schoolteachers that it was a bad idea to get attached to humans, but it hadn't done a thing to stop him.

A Time Lord could live practically forever, but no human ever would – or at least, none had ever been meant to. He'd allowed himself to lose sight of that with Rose, because the Last Great Time War had scarred him deeper than anything before it ever had. His last self had been bitter and angry and closed off from the universe. He'd still run around doing his best to save it, but he hadn't really _cared_ anymore.

Then he'd blown up a shop girl's job and seen himself through her eyes when she categorically refused to let him just saunter off. He'd been intrigued, but only reluctantly. He'd been knowingly rude, and then he'd taken her directly to see the destruction of her own planet and thrown her into the deep end with a truly alien gathering of aliens. Not a bit of it phased her for more than a moment or two, and suddenly he was seeing the universe with whole new eyes again through Miss Rose Tyler. It had been fantastic.

When events put him into the position of seeing the universe through actual new eyes, he had been shaped by Rose. With his people utterly gone from the universe, he'd needed the connection she had been forming with him, and needed it badly. As a consequence, this version of himself felt things so freshly and keenly he almost forgot he wasn't human from moment to moment some days. He'd approached the universe with a certain sense of wonder from the day he ran away from Gallifrey, despite the gruff facade he'd worn back then trying to seem important. Once he'd actually been out in it, that had only grown. It had been so much easier to feel that and remain detached while the Time Lords still lived, though. He'd had a people and a sense of place in the universe, even if he wasn't always particularly fond of it. When the war had ended and they were all gone, leaving him so very much alone, he'd opted for complete detachment. When that turned out to be a miserable road that lead nowhere good, given the opportunity to change, he'd jumped back into life with no detachment at all.

Even as old and as clever as he was, while he was busy playing the human Rose saw him as, he'd forgotten that it couldn't last. Despite the fact that he'd said as much to Rose, not all that long ago. This version of himself just got too attached too easily. That had been fun, until now. He'd been so much closer to Rose, far less the slightly-paternal figure he'd more often found himself playing to companions in the past. He'd lost himself in the adventure of being half of a team and been clever enough to feign obliviousness when Rose tried to turn that into something even more human. He'd only been half-faking horror at that talk of carpets and mortgages on Krop Tor.

Now, when it all came crashing down, he allowed himself just a few moments to evaluate. He was sad, certainly, but this was not the first time a companion had left him and would by no means be the last. At least Rose was safe and with people who cared about her, even if he would never see her again – well, mostly. He did have a few thoughts about saying goodbye. Perhaps she had said forever, but humans didn't do forever. He always lived in the moment and he'd never wanted to argue, so he'd let her think what she liked. Whether it was a matter of change or of age, eventually she'd have died during one of their mad adventures, or wanted him to settle down in one place, or simply left him for someone who could.

That wasn't him. He'd left unwanted expectations behind on Gallifrey and had never looked back with nostalgia about being tied down. He was a wanderer, a traveler - no, an adventurer! He'd never be happily domesticated. The fact that it truly hurt every time one of his companions left him for a life like that didn't change anything. He'd go mad in a handful of days tied to one place and one time, even if the universe didn't end without him to fix it. He thrived on constant challenges that kept him from dwelling upon the many centuries' worth of unpleasant memories in his head. Without that -

Still, right now, the pain of separation was a very heavy weight. The desperate desire for attachment had lead him to build his entire life around Rose. It was better to learn of and come to terms with the foibles of his individual regenerations early on. He just had to remember this lesson the next time some spunky young human caught his attention. He'd make it clear from the outset that any arrangements were temporary. Hopefully that would keep things clear for everyone.

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A/N: I abstractly understand why some people like it, and heck RTD all but made it cannon, but codependent Doctor does nothing for me. Felt the need to try to paint him a little less human while exploring why he might have still ended up coming off otherwise.


	3. An Echoing Phrase

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**An Echoing Phrase**

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Three words, with a potentially ambiguous meaning. A short musing on a facet of the underlying character of the Doctor. Refers most specifically to events taking place during _The Doctor's Daughter._

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He had grabbed a gun and pointed it with the intention to follow through. The rage and hate boiling through his mind in that moment had been a palpable thing so very close to overwhelming him. In the aftermath of the day, with Martha safely dropped back home and Donna fulfilling that oh-so-human need for hours of sleep, he found himself thinking back on it in shame. The memory made him feel physically ill, the cold knowledge of just how very close he had been to crossing over a line. Worse, that particular one was a line he'd sworn his whole life against ever since he chose who he wanted to be – the Doctor. Across the span of years since that defining moment, there were so many things that already haunted him. The memory of the sensation of his own finger trembling on that trigger would now be added to the truly disgraceful ones.

In all those long, long years he has been alive, there always existed a very good reason he'd hardly ever picked up a weapon. It was too easy, when you had a gun in your hand, to think like a man with a gun in his hand. Part of him felt like a Timelord from the planet Gallifrey should be better than that, above the kinds of baser impulses these humans gave in to all the time. Maybe the others of his race had been, maybe it was just him that was capable of becoming so perilously out of control. With the Time War - well, it didn't matter, really. They were all gone now and what they might have once thought or done was irrelevant. As arrogant as all his human friends seemed to think he could be, he knew he couldn't let himself be deluded into thinking he was better than any one of them in this matter. That was why he knew it was important to avoid the temptation of carrying a weapon at the ready. If it also allowed him to pretend superiority, to act as though he didn't know he could become just as susceptible as any to the temptation to obliterate the opposition with only a twitch of a finger? That was no one else's business so far as he was concerned.

Still, as much as he often allowed his emotions and impulses to rule him – especially this particular version of himself - he was careful. Today may have gone badly, but he'd kept himself from actually doing anything. He had told the people of Messaline to take him as an example of a man who never would and build their society off of it. He'd meant it. He wasn't perfect, and it wasn't a fact that he would never feel the temptation to kill another being. Rage, fear, and hatred were all things he was perfectly capable of feeling even unto the point of wanting to murder. Maybe he wasn't just a man, but he was no kind of god to be beyond temptation. Moreover, he had certainly killed before. Though he tried to avoid thinking on it, more living souls than he could even begin to accurately estimate had met their end as a consequence of one thing or another that he had done. Some by accident, but many more by deliberate design.

Only a few had died when he pointed a weapon and pulled a trigger in such a personal way, but the number was still greater than zero. That wasn't what he meant when he said he never would.

He would hate and sometimes he would actively seek to kill. What he would not and could not do while still being the person he was - and had been for all his years under the more superficial changes - was to do them both together. He would never rejoice in a death, no matter how deserved it was. He would act when he had to in order to prevent a greater tragedy, whatever the cost in lives and his own soul's weight, but he would not act out of hatred and anger or for revenge.

He never would.

Any version of himself that would do so, that could glory in the death of another being, any other being, was no longer him. He was the Doctor, a moniker he had given himself with deliberated purpose. A name that meant someone who helps, who heals, who makes things better. He never would, because the day someone calling himself the Doctor acted out of malice or exulted in death, the man he was would be dead. Anything else was a lie.

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A/N: It seems necessary to note that this was written prior to the end of season 7, and may end up looking very weird and/or AU in the context of the episodes set to follow upon those ending hooks. As always, thanks for taking the time to read, especially anyone taking the time to provide feedback of some kind.


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